Landing performance, from a touchdown point to achievement of a target taxi speed, is affected by many parameters. Some of these parameters include weather, winds, runway length and surface conditions. The aircraft's equipment configuration, such as a combination of one or more of an auto brake setting, spoiler setting, landing flap configuration, and a thrust reverser configuration, can also affect landing performance. An optimal landing performance must balance safe landings with factors that affect cost, such as proper maintenance and usage of the components in the relevant equipment.
With respect to brakes, in some instances, a technical problem occurs in that they degrade more quickly than expected, i.e., they do not support as many landing cycles as they are purported to support. This problem inflates costs unnecessarily. A potential contributor to this problem is that it has been determined that pilots often utilize auto brake settings at levels higher than required. In these scenarios, the required safe landing performance could have been achieved for the given operating conditions with lower brake settings. Therefore, technical problems to address for optimal landing performance include, first, the cost tradeoff between brake usage, thrust reverser configuration, and fuel consumption, and second, a way to provide this navigational assistance to the pilot.
Accordingly, systems and methods for optimizing landing performance are desirable. The desired systems and methods identify an optimized equipment configuration based on a comparison of costs of available equipment configurations and available exit-ways. The desired systems and methods additionally incorporate taxi fuel costs for the taxi on the exit-way. The desired systems and methods process environmental conditions, brake condition, when the last maintenance was performed on the brakes, and a number of landing cycles performed by the brakes since the last maintenance into the cost comparison. The following disclosure provides these technological enhancements, in addition to addressing related issues.